The City Streets

Purchase Concentrated Living
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ABOUT
"This group is Alberta's only hope. "Concentrated Living" is their latest album and if their brand of Power Pop is any indication of their live performance, then we have lots of hope for them. (along with their home province)."-CBC Radio 3
“Some Replacements, some early Costello, a bottle of Whiskey, and you’ve got some idea of where these hearts-on-their-sleeves, punk prairie boys are coming from.” –Now Toronto NXNE preview
"Their songs- a tight mix of the hard social message of the Clash and the twang of Wilco- are spectacular."- Vue Weekly cover story
about the new record, Concentrated Living:
A melancholy celebration of people and places remembered fondly by a hard drinking band more at home on the road than in their native Alberta, Concentrated Living by Edmonton's City Streets is like suddenly remembering that today is the birthday of someone you fell in love with a long time ago. Like anthems for lonely people, the album chronicles faraway and fleeting love, not just for a person but for an imagined life that continues to slip away. Playing a sort of damaged folk--one tinged with punk's defiance--the City Streets describe a defeated generation that has lost faith in religion, politics, and tradition, and doesn't know what it can grasp onto. Concentrated Living is the perfect album for any morning that follows a night where you had whiskey and cigarettes for dinner and a midnight snack. Trust me. - Bryan Birtles
The City Streets, hailing from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada formed in 2005. They play diverse melodic bliss power pop with the spirit of punk rock always shining a light.
Catch The City Streets everywhere and anywhere throughout 2009.
The City Streets
Concentrated Living
(Paperbird)
*****
It’s been a long time coming, but between swigs of cheap wine, deathwish winter tours, and passing out in your hallway closet, Edmonton’s favourite pill-poppers have managed to release a sophomore album that tugs at your heartstrings and your corroded liver. Concentrated Living is mostly narrative, like an old western story-song filtered through Kerouac and Li Po, Bukowski and The Replacements. The Streets made their bones on the road, and this disc shows they have the bruises to prove it. Singer Rick Reid is no stranger to loss and longing, but the man knows the flowers of heartbreak can be beautiful in hindsight. “My friend was there when I ran into the street / The truck was gone, so was her little heartbeat,” he sings on “Ballad of a Blind Dog,” the group’s tearjerkin’ take on Old Yeller — and you know damn well that every word of it is true. A petty Edmonton expat once wrote an open letter to the group stating “You’re not Bruce Springsteen, I think you should lay off,” but The Boss hasn’t written a song half as good as these in years, so maybe the rest of the world should lay off and let The City Streets do their thing. -TRAVIS SARGENT (See Magazine)
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Order THESE THINGS HAPPEN here. Yes, right here.